


Change in Perspective

by penumbria



Series: Changes [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penumbria/pseuds/penumbria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gibbs quit. Tony is in charge. McGee is confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnnieB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieB/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jacie (solariana) for the beta help!  
> Cover art by penumbria  
> Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or its characters, I only own this story and make no money from it.

 

Tony DiNozzo sat on the third from the bottom step in the basement of a familiar house in Alexandria. Over the past five years he had been in this spot more times than he could count. Sometimes he was watching Leroy Jethro Gibbs work on his boat while Tony himself ate a pizza and rambled or worked on a crossword or simply watched the master at work as a marvel of wood took shape under his talented hands. But today was different. Today, Tony was alone in the basement of the house and he had no pizza or crossword or anything in his hands.

Earlier that day, Tony had watched as the man he admired and even loved had turned his back on him, on all of them: the team, the agency, the sailors and marines that they protected and served. In a true temper tantrum the silver haired agent had handed over his badge to his second in command and resigned. Hoping to talk sense into the damaged man, Tony had come to his house as soon as he could, only to find it empty. Granted, it wasn't like he had been able to follow directly on the heels on the somewhat amnesiac man. Gibbs had handed the team over to Tony but considering the insanity of the past few days and the ultimate outcome, thanks to the bureaucratic assholes in charge, there was a lot of paperwork, reports and red tape to be handled. It was now Tony's responsibility to handle it.

Tony had finally been able to leave the Navy Yard six hours after Ducky had given Gibbs a ride home. Tony had felt encouraged to find the door unlocked - as usual - but when he searched the house for signs of Gibbs, he found none. The duffle bag which was always under the bed was gone as were a lot of clothes. The photo album which was always in the bedside table and the framed picture that rested above it were gone. The bathroom was empty of any personal care items. The furniture was still in place, but the fridge was empty and a bag of trash sat in the drive ready for pickup. Gibbs had left. And if Tony knew the man, which he was sure he did, the former marine was on his way to his mentor in Mexico.

Tony sat in the silence of the empty basement, staring at the half finished boat, abandoned just as Tony himself had been. Sitting in the semi-darkness, as dawn swiftly approached, images flashed across his memory, bringing emotions with them. He saw himself chasing a suspect down an alley in Baltimore and tackling him in a textbook football move, sticking his gun in the man's face, only to see him grin up at him. He saw the man comforting Tony in an orange hallway before pointing over his shoulder, tacitly offering him a job to replace his old one that could no longer be tolerated. He saw him sitting on the sofa in the living room of the very house Tony was haunting, a beer in his hand as he poured Tony glass after glass of Gibbs' favored rotgut bourbon to drown the ending of his engagement and the pain and humiliation of being left nearly at the altar by Wendy. He saw the man bent over the wood in the basement sanding the boat, his arms on either side of Tony's body, his hands on Tony's as he guided them up and down the wood, smoothing it. Tony saw those same arms wrapped around him in a different room, sweat pouring off of them as their owner moved above him. He felt ghostly, calloused hands sliding inside of him and grasping him to stave off the orgasm that approached too quickly. He felt the stubble of the former gunnery sergeant's cheek as it had scraped his throat. He recalled the taste of Gibbs' cock in his mouth, pre-cum dripping out as Tony licked it.

As the memories let him go, Tony slowly rose to his feet and climbed the stairs. With his hand lingering on the railing, he wanted to stay but knew that to do so would only bring him more pain, not less. The man he wanted was gone, running away from his own memories, or more specifically, the lack of them and the situation created by both the terrorist and the bureaucrats. Gibbs was gone and Tony was alone. As he always had been and as he always ended up in the end.


	2. Chapter 2

Special Agent Timothy McGee entered the building at NCIS late one night. It was after midnight, but he had left a flash drive with important information about his upcoming book release on it in his desk and needed the information in order to send an e-mail to his publisher before he left for work in the morning. No one at the office knew that he had gotten an actual publishing deal, though everyone knew that writing was one of his hobbies, along with his computer video games. He had made sure his book would be published under a pseudonym, he knew that he would be unbearably teased if it was revealed.

It had been almost two months since he had been made senior field agent under Tony DiNozzo's team lead when Gibbs had retired. And frankly, Tim couldn't understand how he hadn't been given the job before. With his intelligence and his degrees, he knew that he deserved it much more than Tony did, with his physical education degree and working as a beat cop while he chased everything in a skirt that had a pulse. Even transvestites, Tim chuckled to himself, recalling the case with Commander Voss who had murdered an NCIS agent and ended up making out with Tony in the guise of Amanda Reed, his female alter ego. 

I don't understand why the director confirmed Tony's appointment to team lead. It's not like Gibbs was in his right mind when he turned his badge over to Tony. And he didn't really have faith in him either. “You'll do.” Obviously even with his head full of memory holes, Gibbs still realized that Tony is only worthy of being a place holder. Plus he keeps trying to act like he's Gibbs. But then comes up with dumb things like his stupid campfires. 

Tim's mind ran along these lines as he rode up to the bullpen in the elevator. He walked out into the darkened area, where the lights were dimmed to a nighttime shine, as Tim turned the corner to head to his desk, planning to simply grab his flash drive and leave as quickly as possible. But before he could carry out his plan, he stopped dead in shock. His team lead, Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, was asleep at his desk; the L-shaped one that used to belong to Gibbs. As the older man slept, his head was resting on a stack of file folders and his computer screen was on.

Ever curious, and wondering why the playboy was working so late, and how much of his paperwork he needed to re-do, McGee went behind his senior agent to look at the computer monitor. On the screen was a copy of Tim's latest report on their last case. Tony had been in the process of editing it. McGee was incredibly insulted. He was a soon to be published author. How dare he change his reports?!?

Tim grabbed the keyboard and pulled it over to himself, carefully and quietly. He began searching through the old files of his case reports since Gibbs left. He found that they had all been edited, often added to. His jaw set, Tim searched further back and found that Tony had done this even before Gibbs had been blown up and disappeared after waking from his coma. He saw that after his first two months on the team, Tony had begun editing his reports before Gibbs signed off on them. He remembered how Gibbs continually sent his reports back to be changed for those first months and how he could never seem to get it right, then all of a sudden Gibbs had accepted his reports as written. Tim had thought that he had finally been doing them correctly. But it seemed that Tony was correcting them to Gibbs' standard instead. 

Tim was confused. Why would Tony do this? If he was trying to make McGee look stupid, he would have let him keep handing in sub-standard reports. It didn't make sense. Tim pushed the keyboard back towards Tony and went to his own desk, lost in thought, trying to make sense of things.

Tim decided to do what he did best and began a computer search, then another and another. He first checked all of Kate's old reports, then Ziva's, then Tony's own. He found that Tony had corrected Kate's reports after a few months and Ziva's as well. Looking at Ziva's most recent reports, handed in since Gibbs' retirement, Tim saw that they were beyond sub-standard. To him, the originals looked like something a high school student would turn in. Her early reports when she first joined the team were nowhere near as bad. And Tim even found a few recent reports that were written in Hebrew. Not just the notes, which could be excused on some level, but the actual reports themselves. Tony obviously had to translate them somehow before adjusting them to be turned in. 

Tim shook his head in wonder as he looked at the search results that had Tony's name on them. He had expected there to be more than any of the other searches since Tony had been there the longest but, the sheer mountain of paperwork that McGee discovered amazed the man. There weren't just case reports but, also all kinds of bureaucratic paperwork, from expense reports to mileage reports on the vehicles to requests for various supplies and training days. 

With a frown, McGee did something that he suddenly felt he should have done months, if not years, ago. He searched for the job requirements of a senior field agent, both the prerequisites for the position as well as the job duties. 

Both searches were eye openers. To become an SFA, it was required that the applicant had at least a Master's degree and had been a field agent or the equivalent for at least three years. The job duties were numerous, varied and included a huge amount of paperwork that Tony was obviously still doing rather than handing it to Tim. Being painfully honest with himself, Tim acknowledged that he hadn't exactly been giving his best to Tony since Gibbs split. 

Several more searches revealed the true extent of Tony's education, which did start with a physical education degree but, went on from there passing a Master's degree and including classes that were leading to a doctorate. McGee felt a little humiliated that Tony never told him but, realized that with the way he rubbed his degrees in Tony's face, it wasn't all that surprising. He wondered if anyone knew or if they all bought into the playboy frat image that Tony projected so well. Tim could see now that it was just an image as he stared at the time logs going back for years. If Tony was often in the office in the middle of the night, working on things, he wouldn't have time to be the player and skirt chaser he portrayed.

Tim realized he needed to step up and try to be a friend to Tony. And definitely be a better agent. In actuality, Tim shouldn't even be a temporary SFA. He didn't have the time as a field agent. So he needed to support Tony and learn to do the job the director had given him, rather than let Tony burn himself out trying to do Gibbs' old job as well as Tony's own old job which was now McGee's responsibility. If he wanted to move up the ladder, he needed to learn and the only one available to teach him was Tony. Thinking back, he realized that was the way it had always been. Gibbs had never really taught them anything other than his precious rules. Tony was the one who taught him how to be a field agent. Now he would learn to be a proper SFA from him. Tim just needed to figure out how to bring it up without it seeming like an attack to Tony.

McGee shut down his computer and grabbed the flash drive he had come for. Walking to the elevator, he contemplated how he was going to change and if Tony would even be willing to help him after his attitude lately.


	3. Chapter 3

After that late night, Tim began observing Tony closely and watching everyone's reactions to him and around him. It had been three weeks since Tim had come across Tony sleeping at his desk in the bullpen and started to realize some of the truth behind the mask his team lead wore since they met. 

It had been a truly eye-opening experience. The first completely blatant evidence about what Tony was dealing with came in the form of Ziva the very next morning. Or rather, it was what didn't come. That being Ziva herself. She didn't show up at the office until after ten that morning. And she had no excuse, she didn't even try to make one. She just showed up and started work as if it was seven in the morning, not nearly lunch. Then, after only two hours of work, she left for a two hour long lunch break. Granted, they were working on cold cases but, after not even starting until mid-morning, Ziva's actions showed her contempt for the man leading her team. Tim knew she would never have done something like this when Gibbs was in charge. But as she, and everyone else, including Tim himself, repeated so often, Tony wasn't Gibbs.

Whenever Tony had walked into Abby's lab, he came out wearing a sticker that read “Trainee” on it. Tim could have understood if it had just been the once when Gibbs just left them, but it had been months and she was still doing it. Abby didn't deal well with change. Tony never said anything to her about it or about her virtual shrine to Gibbs everywhere in her lab. Tim knew that if she had treated him the way she was treating Tony, she would have heard about it weeks ago. But Tony just took it. The only way Tim could see that it was even bothering the older man was in the way he was increasingly sending Tim to get results from the lab rather than going himself. And that had only been since Tim had started acting like an agent and not a spoiled, entitled brat. There was one other tell that Tony was unhappy with Abby – whenever he couldn't avoid a visit to the lab and its resultant sticker, later that day, a peek into the trash can next to Tony's desk, would show an absolutely shredded sticker there, obviously ripped apart in anger that was never otherwise expressed.

Tim had realized that Tony was truly struggling with all of his duties. He took to looking over all of the changes that Tony made to his reports throughout the years; analyzing them and using the analysis to adjust his own reports until he finally saw that Tony wasn't changing them anymore. Then he approached Tony and told him that he thought he was ready to take over some of the paperwork that he should be handling with his new job title. Tony's eyebrows had raised for a moment before his eyes had narrowed and he had smirked lightly. 

“Your reports are much better now. I haven't had to fix nearly as much for over a week. And today's was just right. Not too much techno-babble, just straightforward enough to be understood by the lawyers, but with enough detail to show how things were discovered. Good job, McGee.” He had nodded and smiled a little. “You are learning well, my padawan. I'll gladly turn over some of the SFA paperwork to you. We'll start off easy and I'll even give you my templates to work from. If you can get it done, correctly and on time, I'll turn over all of the SFA work to you by the end of the month.”

Tim had nodded and thanked the older man, promising to do his best. And he had. It had truly been a ton of extra work above what he was already doing but, he buckled down, worked hard and got it done. He wasn't happy about it but, he knew that the work came with the job and the extra responsibility. 

And now, he was approaching Tony's door with dinner in hand, ready to take care of his team leader. The team leader who had taken a bullet in the arm for him and Ziva when they hadn't listened to his orders on where to go and the suspect had gotten the drop on them. Tony had pushed them out of the way of what would have been likely fatal shots and had gotten hit three times. One grazed along his right forearm and two actual penetrations; a through and through on his right tricep and a bullet which lodged in the muscle of his right bicep. He would be out for a week, then on light duty for at least a month. Tim wanted to help him however he could, to show his thanks for his life and his regret for once again following Ziva's lead into being an entitled ass.

Timothy McGee walked up to the apartment door of Tony DiNozzo's apartment and rang the bell, the box of pizza carefully balanced in his hand. 

The door swung open and Tony stood there swaying a little, obviously still high on the painkillers the doctor had provided. “Hey, it's McGoober – McGeeber – McGeeker – McTimmer – Timmy! And he's de-lie-ver-ing pizza! I love pizza. Pizza is awesome and yummy and Italian though it was really developed far differently here in America and we twist things and make them our own and use them up and throw them out and leave them behind and they fill up the dumps and the dumps are dumps and it hurts and they leave you behind 'cause you weren't anything special.”

Tony swayed, holding onto the edge of the door with his left hand as Tim slipped past him and placed the pizza box on the coffee table before returning to help his partner to the sofa. “Hey. Is that pizza?” Tony asked, as he saw the box now sitting open on the table. “I love pizza. Are you the delivery boy?”

Tony squinted at Tim. “No, you're McGee. Special Agent Timothy McGee. That's you.”

“Yes, Tony. That's me.”

“What is McGee doing here? Why would McGee bring me pizza? Are you a hallucination? 'Cause that smells really good for a figment of my imagination. Unless I ordered it and the only figment is Tim. That's it. Tim wouldn't be here. He may do his paperwork now but, he wants my job, my new job, he wants to be Gibbs 'cause I'm not Gibbs. I don't want to be Gibbs. I wouldn't abandon my team. I actually believe in rule number one. I wouldn't screw over my partner. Or my team. And I wouldn't just walk away from someone I've been screwing either. Almost four years and then he just leaves. He remembers fucking Jenny, sure, and whatever his thing is with Ziva but, me, he can't be bothered to remember or care about the guy he's been seeing for years. I was just a convenient hole. That's all I'm good for, ya know, figment McGee. Everyone knows it. I'm only good to be a whore. Even Director Jenny wants to whore me out to an arms dealer. Okay, to an arms dealer's daughter but, whatever. Same thing in the long run. Director Jenny the pimp and DiNozzo the rent boy.”

Tony continued to softly babble on, high as a kite and without any filter, while Tim's mouth dropped open in shock. Tony and Gibbs? Tony – the skirt chasing frat boy and Gibbs – the three times, no four times married, three times divorced, ex-marine gunnery sergeant? Tony is gay? Gibbs is gay? Or bi? Or whatever? I have been really blind. I mean, I know they were close and Tony was so loyal to Gibbs it was insane, but lovers?!? I guess I can see it, hints of it. So much for rule number twelve. Gibbs really was a hypocrite. About the only one of his own rules he hasn't broken is number nine, always carry a knife. Poor Tony, he's really been dealing with more than I knew. Not just Ziva's insubordination, Abby's bratty behavior, Ducky's anger and my own entitlement but, losing a lover, a long term lover who doesn't even recall you? I don't know what that thing about the director is about but, he needs someone to be there for him. And no one else knows. He always carries it all alone. I don't know why he won't lean on anyone but, I am going to be there for him. I'll make him lean on me. He's always there for me, I never even realized it but, he is. And now I'll return the favor.

McGee sat beside his friend and put his hand on his uninjured shoulder. “I'm not a hallucination, Tony, and we'll figure things out. We're going to get you healed up and back to work before you know it, Boss.”


End file.
